Are you the type of person to drive a car until it hits 100,000km and then get rid of it? Well, maybe you need to take a look at Graeme Hebley.
Graeme Hebley and his 1993 Toyota Corolla have just surpassed a very significant milestone.
A newspaper delivery contractor since the 1960s, Hebley’s Corolla ticked over the two million kilometre mark earlier in the month, the New Zealand Herald reports.
When Hebley got his 1993 Toyota Corolla in 2000 it had only done 80,000km. He was driving it 5000km a week for work so the car began to rack up mileage. Hebley was having the car serviced every two weeks. Not much has been repaired on the Corolla apart from the cambelt needing to be replaced about 20 times and the wheel bearings changed.
“It still has the original engine and transmission,” said local mechanic John Sherman.
”If I hadn’t worked on it, I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it could do two million without something going wrong. It’s only because I know that I believe it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t.”
”That era of Toyota has such built-in reliability.
”You miss any of those out and it just wouldn’t work.”
The highest amount of kilometres Sherman had seen on a car besides Hebley’s was around the 700,000km mark.
”Nothing like this. In my whole career, that is the highest I have seen.”
Hebley, has not gotten sick of driving this vehicle and reckons he’s done well over three million kilometres total since he started delivering newspapers in 1968.
”How could you not love this car? Whatever you do, it just bounces back.
”The car might outlast me at this point.”
A 1993 @Toyota Corolla DX in New Zealand has clocked a near-mythical 2,000,000km since new. As first reported by the Whanganui Chronicle, local newspaper delivery contractor Graeme Hebley bought the station wagon from Japan in 2000 with 80,000km on the odometer. — @drivecomau pic.twitter.com/V8FuFld6Ka
— Michael (@JaMtoka) March 26, 2022